FTC Moves to Unmask Word-of-Mouth Marketing — The Federal Trade Commission yesterday said that companies engaging in word-of-mouth marketing, in which people are compensated to promote products to their peers, must disclose those relationships. — In a staff opinion issued yesterday …

Why are they here? — "I don't mean to be rude," my wife said to me over the phone earlier, "but why have all these people come to talk to you?" — Politicians such as Sarkozy have muscled in on 'leweb3' — It's a good question. Why did we have an address from a former Israeli prime minister …

[leweb] Sarkozy - Conservative candidate lectures us — The conservative candidate for the presidency and Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, comes to address the conference. He talks quickly and I'm taking notes on the simultaneous translation, and not keeping up. — He begins by saying the Internet is important.

SECOND LIFE: A story too good to check — CLAY SHIRKY — Second Life, the much-hyped virtual world backed by Benchmark Capital, is heading towards two million users. Except it isn't, really. We all know how this game works, and has since the earliest days of the web:

Skype's Free Phone Call Plan Will Soon Have Annual Fee — Skype, the Internet calling service owned by eBay, said Tuesday that as of Jan. 1 it would begin charging $30 a year for unlimited calls to landline and mobile phones within the United States and Canada. Those calls had been free since last spring.

Laser etching coming to a laptop near you — If you can't stand the idea of a cookie cutter laptop and you live in New York, there's a new option: laser etching. — Phil Torrone, an editor at Make magazine, and Limor Fried, a former fellow at the tech-focused art studio Eyebeam R&D …

About Transferable Stock Options — We work hard to attract and retain the world's best talent in a number of ways, and a part of that is offering competitive compensation packages. We offer standard things such as competitive salary, cash incentives, restricted stock units and stock options.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 beta to drop this friday — Exclusive: Adobe Systems Inc. on friday will make available for download an early public beta of its next-generation graphics editor, Photoshop CS3, but will otherwise abstain from delivering pre-release copies of other Creative Suite 3.0 applications.

Search 2.0 - What's Next? — Written by Emre Sokullu and edited by Richard MacManus — You may feel relatively satisfied with the current search offerings of Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. Search today is undoubtedly much better than what it was in the second half of the 1990's.

It's Official(ish): MySpace Is Biggest Site on Internet — The November Comscore numbers show the inevitable: Fox Interactive (mostly MySpace) now has more page views than the combined Yahoo sites, taking the no. 1 spot for the first time. This was less to do with MySpace growth …